Tethered

by Amy MacKinnon

  I couldn’t help but imagine Trecie hiding outside too, waiting for Mike and Ryan to leave so she could return. Wherever I was in the house, I’d check the windows to search for her. I may even have left a child’s coat and mittens behind the holly bush that obscures one of the basement windows. A Christmas present two weeks early. Pliable fabric to hug her body. No doubt it was my imagination, but on Mike’s fourth day here, I saw her watching me from that window. I caught only a glimpse, a movement, a flash of hair swinging just out of sight. I wasn’t certain, so said nothing. The coat and mittens are still there.

  On his last day, day ten, Mike wandered around the property, then walked back and forth along Washington Street. I wondered what he thought about during those long hours, his wife in the cemetery across the street. I tried not to consider what he thought of me, one floor below.

  I was walking up the stairs from my workroom when I saw him. He must have been waiting for me, sitting in one of the leather wingbacks in the reception area, avoiding Mrs. Shannon’s body in the adjacent mourning room, the Adonis (sad memories) tucked against the dead woman’s thigh. I could hear Mike’s fingers drumming against the armrest, the whisper of his radio turned down low concealed beneath his suit coat. He stood when I reached the top step.

  “Clara.” Though his face was smooth, save for the constant furrow of his forehead, and his suit crisp, he himself appeared threadbare, as if he had been rubbed raw against something coarse and unforgiving.

  “We’re closing down the stakeout for now. I appreciate your cooperation, but we have to direct our resources to other investigations. If Trecie comes back, you should call Kate, let her know.” His words were slowed, his gaze steady on a spot above my head. I looked away when he placed a business card on the table next to Mrs. Shannon’s guest book. “Here’s her number.”

  I didn’t move, I didn’t speak. We stood like that for what seemed several minutes, but I was more patient, more used to awkward silences.

  Eventually, his gaze steady on the floor, he said, “I’ll see you around.” Then he was gone.

  A part of me was relieved. With him gone, Trecie might return. I wouldn’t call Mike if she did. I would give Linus Kate’s business card and he would call.

  Ryan had been here too, but he was sent back to patrol after a week. He spent each day of his stakeout pacing the mourning rooms, unwrapping peppermints from the candy dishes, then crinkling the cellophane between his fingers. I refilled the dishes each night after he left.

  His last day here, Ryan walked in as I was finishing with Mrs. Shannon. Her elderly mother dropped off a simple black dress from her daughter’s closet and a strand of paste pearls. After preparing Mrs. Shannon’s hair, framing her face with soft curls to distract the eye from her eternal frown, I began layering the foundation across the flabby part of her nose, where an explosion of blood vessels laid waste to what might once have been flirty and coy. With my back to the door, it wasn’t until I heard the clack of the peppermint against his teeth that I turned.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He raised his hands as if to surrender.

  He closed the door and took his time crossing the room, stopping when he reached the floor drain at the end of my worktable, at Mrs. Shannon’s feet. Other than Linus and my classmates at mortuary school, no one has ever seen me prepare a body.

  “How’d she die?” he asked, nodding to the table while his right foot toed in and out between the bars of the floor drain.

  “Cirrhosis.” My forefinger glanced the edge of the curling iron, singeing the cuticle. I tried not to wince.

  “She’s young, huh?”

  “Forty-two.”

  “She have kids?”

  “No, just her parents and brothers. Divorced.”

  Ryan went silent, fixing on the woman’s face, though his foot never stopped digging into the drain. Without warning, he let loose a queer belch of air. I put the iron on my worktable and reached for the comb.

  “She kind of reminds me of my mother, you know?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” I turned in his direction, but his focus remained on Mrs. Shannon. He waved me off.

  I lifted a curl near the front of the scalp and teased some body into it.

  “My little sister looked just like her, you know, a real live Mini-Me. My mom said I took after my dad, but no one really knew him, so I don’t know. She said I was just like ’im.”

  Once I smoothed the hairs back into place, I partitioned off a section toward the back, curling it while Ryan spoke, his voice losing its volume, its vigor, though his foot still spasmed within the grate. Another length of hair around the iron as his foot went in and out. Straight, glossy hair. I counted four screws fastening the drain to the floor; chemicals used to sterilize the bodies wash over the surface of that grate. He wiggled the tip of his shoe under a bar and lifted, creasing the leather. The screws held. Steam rose from the curl as I released it.

  “God, she really looks like my mom.” His voice became a whisper and his foot finally stopped. I followed his gaze to Mrs. Shannon’s face, her left eyelid shiny from a trickle of glue that seeped from the area of the tear duct, clumping the lashes gathered at the corner. A cotton swab and nail-polish remover were all it needed. Later.

  “Must have been some life if she was hitting the bottle that hard.” He rolled the peppermint against those yellowed teeth. “I guess we all have our ways of dealing, huh?”

  I reached for the can of hairspray, super hold—Mrs. Shannon’s wake was a few days away—and depressed the knob with a hiss. The scent of artificial grapes nearly masked the odor of embalming fluid. Ryan pulled his foot free and loped toward Linus’s painting.

  “So, no sign of this girl Trecie, huh?”

  “No.”

  “You sure it was the same girl from that video?”

  I nodded and looked at the basement window where the child’s coat remained, the nylon probably stiff from the cold.

  Ryan shifted his weight between his feet, crunching the peppermint as he moved. “ ’Cause Mikey and me was talking and, I got to tell you, they’re starting to wonder.”

  “Wonder?”

  “I probably shouldn’t say nothing, but Kate thinks maybe you’re confused or, you know, spending too much time down here with no one to talk to”—he swept his arm out, gesturing to the shelves—“all these chemicals and stuff.”

  He wouldn’t stop. “Mikey’s got a lot riding on this, you know. The chief ’s been pushing him for disability. He can’t screw up again. And Mike listens to Kate.”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I need to finish with Mrs. Shannon.”

  He shook his head and then made for the doorway before turning. “Look, I believe you, I really do. We get a lot of women who spend too much time peeking out from behind their curtains, looking for a little attention. They start calling us with hot tips, happens all the time. I know you’re not like that.”

  “I’m not lying.” I started backing toward the door then, my hand feeling behind me for the handle.

  “No, course not. It’s Kate, she thinks you might be sweet on Mike or something. ‘Lonely,’ I think she said. What does she know? Like I say, I believe you.”

  “Please.” I needed him to leave, but I didn’t want to touch him, I didn’t think I could. Instead, I hid myself behind the door, pressing against it with my body, against him. He wouldn’t move. My fingers ached to release the humiliation, to seek those places that were raw and pure. To create a new one. I rounded the edge of the door and repeated, “Please. Excuse me.”

  Though I tried to focus on the floor, I could feel the weight of his eyes on me. Before turning to leave, he said, “I’m not the one who thinks you’re crazy.”

  In the days that followed, the few times I caught Mike’s eye, I heard his words, an endless loop in my head. But I can’t dwell on such things. There’s much to be done: Brockton PD just called for a pickup. This is what requires my attention now. The cop on the scene, Andrew Browne, said t
he body had been in the Vanity Faire apartment at least four days. There’s some relief knowing he’ll be the officer on site.

  I park the hearse just outside the entrance and regard the metal staircase through the glass doors. Like many low-income apartment buildings in the city, there’s no elevator. It’s only three flights. As I reach the landing I snap open the stretcher, and a mouse, brown and fat, races across the vinyl tiles. It dives into a hole in the crumbling plaster, a wall connecting the stairwell to a third-floor apartment. I’ve already paged one of the removers to help me. He should be here soon.

  When I open the door to the hallway, keeping it propped with my foot to slide the gurney through, the stench assaults me. Decomposition has become a familiar odor, but for the residents up and down this hall, as well as those directly above and below, the past two days must have been unbearable. Someone finally called this morning. I can feel their eyes, pressed against their peepholes, watching my arrival. A couple of them are bold enough to stand in their open doorways, arms crossed. One woman has a small boy wrapped around her leg, her belly filled with another. She calls to me as I approach, a finger and thumb pinching closed her nose.

  “That smell is nasty. I always knew she was trouble.”

  I nod, watching the child clad in an expensive-looking sweat suit suck on a lollipop, his enormous eyes staring up at me.

  “We never had cockroaches till she moved in. How long you gonna take, getting her out of here?” Her eyes narrow as she speaks. Still holding her nose, she raises her other hand to purse her mouth around a cigarette.

  I glance at the police officer standing at the opposite end of the hall and shrug. Listening to the wheels of the gurney churn as I make my way toward him, I’m careful to avoid a mound of knotted plastic grocery bags resting against the peeling door frame of one apartment. The upbeat theme song to a popular game show blares from within as I take shallow breaths. The odor of cat urine emanating from that apartment challenges the stench of death.

  The pregnant woman exhales smoke as she persists. “You’ve got to open some windows in there or something, ’cause that’s a big case of nasty.”

  I finally pass her, finally reach the police officer and notice his breathing is labored. I realize it’s because he’s both inhaling and exhaling through his mouth.

  “Hey, Clara,” says Andrew, his arms crossed, his complexion pale. “Looks like she OD’d.”

  I don’t open the door. As horrific as the smell is, it will be worse once this hollow barrier is removed.

  I reach into my satchel and pull out the jar of Vicks VapoRub, extending it to Andrew first. “Did you talk to her doctor?”

  “Nah,” says Andrew, smearing a glob of gel under his nostrils. I notice he’s still breathing through his mouth. “People like her don’t have doctors. M.E. didn’t even come out. You’ll see when you get in there.”

  I nod, reaching for a pair of gloves and a mask. As I turn the knob to enter, Andrew stops me.

  “Sorry, but I can’t help with this one. It’s too disgusting.”

  Inside the efficiency apartment, it’s the expected scene: scraps of paper and unopened bills littering every surface; half-eaten plates and cartons of food forming an unsavory banquet across the one counter; tattered furniture and a filthy white sheet tacked over a pair of windows. The only object in the room that has any luster is a newer television preening on a scavenged wood crate. Everything is covered in a film of grit.

  And there is the body. The woman’s eyes are nearly closed and her brown hair wound through an elastic. She’s wearing a soiled tank top and underpants, half sitting on the couch. Though her face and legs are dangerously bloated, her arms are skeletal, mapped with bruises, all connected by meandering track lines. I avoid looking at those places where her blood and other bodily fluids have pooled. But I’m drawn to her upper arm, cinched with a rubber band, a needle sticking out of the crook of her elbow; two more lie on the couch beside her. A small Baggie is on the floor, floating in a puddle of her own making. It was an intentional death. I marvel at her courage.

  There is no dignity in this room. Death doesn’t allow for it. She must have felt relief with that last breath, when she was delivered from the excruciating pain of a labored life. Looking at her there, her face melting into itself, I’m reminded of a similar scene, one of blood and ache and loss. I stand there for a moment, lost in the constant parallel between birth and death.

  I hear a brief rap on the door before Andrew steps into the room. He stares at me as I stand over the body.

  “I told you it was bad,” he says, his eyes darting over the woman. “Your guy is here, the remover. Carlos? Okay if I send him in?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Before he turns to go, I stop him. “What’s her name?”

  Andrew’s hand covers his face, so his words are muffled. “Craig. Eileen Craig.”

  Carlos nods when he enters. Of all the removers Linus has contracted, he is my favorite. I wonder about his past in Cape Verde, why he’s never once grimaced while handling a body. He’s young and strong, quiet in the homes and around the families, his presence somehow reassuring as they watch their loved one now safe within his sturdy arms. But this woman has no family living with her. Carlos makes the sign of the cross while standing over her, whispering in Portuguese. He then pulls on a pair of gloves, shaking his head when offered the mask. His hand moves to her arm and, with his usual deftness, swipes the needle from her vein, dropping it alongside the others. He pauses and then brushes a clump of matted hair from her face. After several minutes, we manage to place her in the body bag and lift her onto the stretcher. As we roll through the door, I hear Andrew start, but he’s facing the wall. I look away when he begins to retch.

  I glance past Carlos to see if the pregnant woman is still there, waiting to offer her opinion on what remains of her neighbor. There’s only a girl standing in another doorway toward the middle of the hallway, a tiny whimpering dog in her arms. He sniffs the air and cries louder.

  As we near, I notice something familiar about her. The way her long dark hair hangs to her waist, wavy and slightly unkempt; the frail bones under her olive skin; the dark, haunting eyes that plead with me. Though I’m masked and wheeling a body heavy with the odor of rot, she faces me unafraid. My heart hurls itself against my chest: Trecie is here. The wheels of the gurney catch under the weight of the body and begin to grind. Seeing her makes me dizzy. The hall looms, becomes telescopic, the little girl fading in and out of focus at the end. I can hear, feel, my mask collapsing and inflating with each breath (one-two-three). My whole begins to tremble. It’s Trecie. I’m ready to let go of Miss Craig, to gather Trecie and the dog in my arms, when I realize my mistake.

  She isn’t the little girl I’ve been searching for. She isn’t Trecie. And yet—she could be. The resemblance is startling: the same nose, narrow eyes, though she’s older; nine, ten? I can’t help but stare, and she doesn’t look away.

  As we pass, she tucks the dog, a Chihuahua, under her chin and speaks to him, rubbing her nose, that familiar lovely nose, along the top of his head. “É aprovado, Amendoim. Não scared. Oh, Amendoim, é aprovado.”

  Carlos opens the door to the stairwell, careful not to let the door hit the stretcher and jostle the dead woman. Soon we’re outside, where the odor can begin to dissipate in the crush of December air. We load Miss Craig into the hearse and I slam the door behind her. With a wave, Carlos turns to leave. I stop, realizing he can help.

  “Carlos.”

  He turns. We’ve never spoken much beyond the briefest of instructions. He appears curious but still doesn’t speak.

  “What did that girl say?”

  “What girl?” His words are heavily accented, his voice low and careful.

  “The one in the hall, the one holding the dog? She was speaking Portuguese, right?”

  He blinks.

  “What did she say?”

  Carlos waves his hand and shakes his head. He begins to walk away again. />
  Though mindful of my soiled gloves, I don’t hesitate to lay my hand on his shoulder, smearing his jacket. “I have to know.”

  Carlos looks from his shoulder to me. “She said, ‘It’s okay, Peanut. Don’t be scared.’ ”

  He gets into his car and I’m still standing, watching as he drives away. I finally strip the gloves and pull off the mask. As I do, I remember what it’s like to be held captive in the cold grip of fear.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was Tom’s baby. Not really. It was mine.

  Spring of my sophomore year, I was sixteen. The signs had been there for months, though at first I didn’t know. I was so slight, so thin, my cycle was irregular at best and mostly nonexistent. It wasn’t a matter of missing it. Fatigue overwhelmed me, but I was never nauseated. Odors became more intense. After several months, there was a thickening to my waist, nothing more. I ignored it all until I felt the flutter, the awakening of something, someone, inside of me.

  I managed the courage to stop going to the library after school, though I’m not sure it was courage: more survival, desperation, a desire to protect my child from their intrusions. There were no repercussions. I was a distant memory to Tom. And once the pretty, popular girls, hot with spring fever, blossomed under the football team’s attention, they didn’t miss me at the library. If only I’d realized that sooner.

  I began working at Witherspoon Florist. My job was to count stock, freshen the buckets of water, sweep the discarded stems and leaves littering the back room after Daphne finished creating her vast arrangements. Mulrey’s Funeral Home was her best customer.